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DCS Black Shark Tweak Guide Alpha Version


Frazer

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I thought of this pictures nVidia_settings_Bucic.jpg.

 

What we need to ignore, and there has 2 exclamation point? What to leave as you set? To me it seems to me the most influence on the FPS is Vsync, but I'm not sure, because there are many combinations.

 

In any case to get better FPS must be set 4 things:

1) 3D GPU settings,

2) graphics options inside the game, and

3) options.lua

4) graphics.cfg files

 

And now I have to try the method of trial and error.


Edited by kobac

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It was prepared for a different sim by me some time ago. Here's one for black shark

 

3Dsettings_guide_dcs_black_shark_bu.png

 

If one is a beginner:

  1. Use the Frazer's Tweak Guide and don't spare eye candy. It is easier to tune from high performance towards quality than opposite. Especially the lowest water setting and the recommended visibility settings.
    .
  2. Now based on my miniguide: set every option like all of the green settings.
    I hope I won't have to repeat that gray settings are to be ignored after working so hard on such a nice graphic :)
     
    Only two main 3D graphics driver settings two fiddle around left - AA settings group and Vsync. Tune the rest using game settings.
    .
     
  3. Make a decision - enable Vsync or not? Enabling Vsync is highly recommended for the reasons I explained in numerous posts and two main topics. Look it up.
     
    The minimum requirement for Vsync is that your system is capable of rendering not less than 20 FPS in absolutely critical conditions (lots of units and fighting). It is highly recommended again to use such game settings and AA settings (at least 2x is desirable) combination that will allow to meet minimum requirement for Vsync mentioned above.
    .
  4. After dealing with the most important settings mentioned above fine tune the performance using AA settings group and game settings.

 

I've changed in-game settings to game settings to include all the settings one is able to change for DCS.

 

Do you still have any questions, kobac?


Edited by Bucic
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Today I started approximately twenty times Black Shark and changing the 3D settings of my GPU and I found that these settings are best ->

 

1) I first set up in-game graphics like this:

TEXTURES: High

SCENES: Medium

CIV. TRAFFIC: No

WATER: Normal

VISIBILITY RANGE: Medium

HEAT BLUR: Off

SHADOWS: Active planar

RESOLUTION: 1680X1050

ASPECT: 16:10

MONITORS: 1 Screen

RES. OF COCKPIT

DISPLAY: 1024

 

FULL SCREEN

 

and I manage 3D Setting of my 8600GT like this:

nvidiasettingsgrom.jpg

 

nvidiasettings2grom.jpg

 

 

 

 

Thank you Bucic, very good explanation. I'll definitely try your preferences, because to me is very important to smooth game, and there is no chopping


Edited by kobac
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Go and enable at least 8x Anisotropic. It's marked green so it costs you practically nothing :)

 

and read here...

 

Why should I set Texture filtering - Quality = High Quality (maximum)?

 

 

You're all over, Bucic. I've noticed you also like citing yourself. ;)

 

Anyway, the advise for those wanting to save some FPS remains the same - a little here and a little there:

 

-In nHancer use Multisampling 4x

-Anisotropic @ Application

-Optimizations @ Quality

-Res: 1680x1050 (depending on your monitor)

 

You'll get decent visuals and better performance. But even before all the above (including the Vertical Sync drievel) use Frazer's posts as a base.

 

Btw my E8600@4Ghz/9800GTX+ runs the game under higher settings pretty well, so see yourselves.

 

Sabre.

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I rest my case... :music_whistling:

 

I will also leave the riddle of why I quote myself to you.

 

 

Yeh, whatever. I suggest you don't take yourself too serious in the first place, and then note that this a Tweak Guide thread, hence different settings for different guys.

 

Sabre.

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So here I am finally forced to leave these settings (for me, my hardware doesn't allow different values)

 

nvidia3dsettingsgrom.jpg

 

nvidia3dsettings2grom.jpg

 

 

If I put Anisotropic Filtering 8x or even 16x FPS fall to 9-12 at best, with a big chopping. So I had to leave that to Application controlled. Thanks Bucic for suggestions and help.

 

With Fraser guide I set my graphics.cfg and options.lua file (as attached), and value in a game I set on high and still have 30 to 39 FPS. Possible that it may be better set, but that knew some more expert than me :music_whistling:.

 

I've noticed that now, after patch 1.02 no line ["terrPrld"] = "20" maybe the preloading of terrain in to RAM is now stored in some other way ...

Config.zip

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1. Setting anisotropic and antialiasing to application controlled when used in DCS Black Shark / FC2 means OFF in both cases thus making all the other AA and AF related settings obsolete (not functional). Nothing more.

 

Try to set AF to 2x at least. It makes a big difference as this presentation http://www.nhancer.com/help/AFSamples.htm shows.

 

2. It is not convenient to have Vsync on during complex settings tweaking (and it should not be enabled at all while benchmarking) as FPS will change in rather large increments making it hard to estimate the performance one's get at the moment.

 

I would also advise to use benchmarking utility like FRAPS instead of the faulty "by eye method". Exporting data to spreadsheets and making graphs is not necessary. The registered (in text file) Min/Max/Avg values should be enough.


Edited by Bucic
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people posting recommendations (especially for AA and AF) really need to post what resolution they are running DCS at, as well as their GPU and CPU.

My miniguide's purpose is exactly sorting the settings by performance influence regardless of system configuration. If however you'd like to know on what system I am able to pull off 30-60 FPS with Vsync enabled (after using the Frazer's Tweak Guide) then there you go:

 

C2D E7200 2.53GHz @ ~ 3.75GHz

(Scythe Katana)

Modecom Feel 400 power supply

 

2GB DDR2-800 RAM (cheap)

 

NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT 512 MB (Gigabyte GV-NX96T512HP)

 

BenQ FP93GX+ 1280x1024

 

Windows 7 64-bit

 

 

Nothing fancy.

 

 

in-GUI settings:

 

TEXTURES High

SCENES High

CIV TRAFFIC No

WATER below medium as per Frazer's guide - cfg setting

VISIB RANGE High

HEAT BLUR Off

SHADOWS Full

RESOLUTION 1280X1024

RES. OF COKPIT DISPLAYS 512

FULL SCREEN On

 

Other - Cockpit mirrors Off


Edited by Bucic
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I have turned my draw distance ranges below what is reccommended in the tweak guide, since the guy writing it has a 4GHz C2Duo, which will run this better than my 3.52 GHz Phenom II quad core.

 

Shadows at full is an interesting choice; I am not sure, but I think in most games Shadows are GPU bound. I think you might want to change those to the lowest in game setting after you upgrade your monitor.

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I've noticed that now, after patch 1.02 no line ["terrPrld"] = "20" maybe the preloading of terrain in to RAM is now stored in some other way ...

 

....although on my machine it seems to work - setting this upt to 100 makes the game stuttering several times, especially when switchting view points.

Strange strange... :)

 

Greets

S@uDepp

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  • 1 month later...

Hi all,

 

how can I disable the transparency of buildings in V1.0.2?

I tried it in graphic.cfg and graphic_bs.cfg with FogParam2 = 0 but no changes in the running game. :(

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  • 4 months later...

Something for 2000th post :)

 

Shadows performance test - Active planar vs Full

 

210 KB

th_dcs_shadows_benchmark.png

 

A note: A relative difference of 200 on the graph means 20% performance hit for Full shadows.

 

Conclusions:

- I was wrong :D

- full shadows do cause a significant performance hit of about 15% of average FPS

- for big cities with lots of buildings the hit increases to about 25 %

- the smallest difference noted for lowlands with few buildings

- performance hit when looking at more than 10 helicopters with full shadows enabled not observed

 

Hi all,

 

how can I disable the transparency of buildings in V1.0.2?

I tried it in graphic.cfg and graphic_bs.cfg with FogParam2 = 0 but no changes in the running game. :(

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=1031629


Edited by Bucic
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Cockpit displays performance test

 

dcs_cockpitdisplays_perf_test_average_fps.png

 

th_dcs_cockpitdisplays_perf_test_relative_fps.png

 

th_dcs_cockpitdisplays_perf_test_fps.png

 

Conclusions:

- not what one would expect - again

- the real choice is only between 1024 and 1024 every frame ; average performance difference ~ 11 %

 

.


Edited by Bucic
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  • 1 year later...

This tweak guide has helped me a lot, really, a lot of thanks.

I have notice somenthing> I has been more difficult to spot for example, columns of military vehicules. As an example, the su33 mission called a far beach, where you are suposed to atacks a column of militar vehicules, I aproach where they are supose to be, but I don't see them till Im 2k or 3k meters away. Of course at that distance I can't properly align to bomb them, and worst, I start receiving shots from the self propeled armoured vehicules.

 

Can you tell me wich graphical setting affects how well you can see vehicules? O noticed that the vhicules at the described distance seems to be a little transparent.

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This tweak guide has helped me a lot, really, a lot of thanks.

I have notice somenthing> I has been more difficult to spot for example, columns of military vehicules. As an example, the su33 mission called a far beach, where you are suposed to atacks a column of militar vehicules, I aproach where they are supose to be, but I don't see them till Im 2k or 3k meters away. Of course at that distance I can't properly align to bomb them, and worst, I start receiving shots from the self propeled armoured vehicules.

 

Can you tell me wich graphical setting affects how well you can see vehicules? O noticed that the vhicules at the described distance seems to be a little transparent.

Prepare for not very pretty story

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=1031620#post1031620

 

I'm not up to date with ED's sims but AFAIK up to BS 2 and WH you can only tweak it to work less badly.

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Ok... yeap, not a pretty story. But that topic speaks about transparency being observerd throught the shikval system. Im talking about transparency being observed from the pilot looking in the cookpit.

Since I can see you have done quite a nice job about these parameters, what values would you recommend me for spoting a collumn of vehicules from my su33 cockpit at a distance of maybe 6 km?

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  • 4 weeks later...

This guide helped me a lot in BlackShark 1, but now I have Black Shark 2. I have tried to tweak it, and some things are the same, some are not. Others doesnt seem to work at all. Does anyone know of any ways to get more FPS out of BS2?

DCS AJS37 HACKERMAN

 

There will always be bugs. If everything is a priority nothing is.

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Ok... yeap, not a pretty story. But that topic speaks about transparency being observerd throught the shikval system. Im talking about transparency being observed from the pilot looking in the cookpit.

Since I can see you have done quite a nice job about these parameters, what values would you recommend me for spoting a collumn of vehicules from my su33 cockpit at a distance of maybe 6 km?

I can't help you, sorry.

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FPS is very much related to the type of mission being flown and your system specs. I have not found memory to be an issue (I have a 2gb system) but the CPU and video card are big determiners. I've also found that the more objects in the mission the slower it runs (at least on my system). I can get playable framerates with a low number of units but once I get into the medium or high range then I start to slow down.

 

I made the following changes to the graphics.cfg file in /config and found some improvements that made it playable on my system.

 

However I will caution that you need to edit using notepad++ (regular notepad will corrupt the file) and also these changes are not supported nor recommended by ED.

 

They work for my old 32bit xp system so might help others.

graphics.cfg


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